[Jakobud]

I'm using the latest (Eden). When I was watching a video last night, I accidentally pressed Escape or something, which brought me back to the XBMC Dashboard (where you choose Videos, Weather, Settings, etc).

I was trying to figure out how to get back to my video, which was still playing in the background. There were a few small controls on the dashboard for playback as well as a Fullscreen button. The only way I could figure out how to get back to my video was to click the Fullscreen button... I had to press UP, RIGHT, RIGHT, RIGHT, RIGHT then Enter when I was on Fullscreen.

Is that really the only way to get back to watching your video if you are on the dashboard? How come you can't just press ESCAPE? Unless I'm missing something that seems like pretty poor UI design. It seems like you should really just be able to press Escape to clear the UI and be back to whatever activity you were on, in my case watching a video.

I'm new to XBMC and I'm only running it on my desktop PC at the moment but I'm thinking about building a dedicated HTPC for my TV that would run it. But issues like this make me second guess it. Obviously it's easy to use a keyboard or even the mouse to quickly hit the Fullscreen button, but what happens when you are trying to run XBMC off just a remote control? Getting back to your video requires you to jump thru a bunch of hoops...

Hopefully I'm just missing an obvious oversight here...

Also, is this problem an issue with XBMC itself or just the Confluence skin?

[deanmv]

http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Keyboard press Tab. With a remote you can map the "FullScreen" command to whichever button you would want.

[darthdiablo]

Hmm.. I think I know what you're talking about (live video playing in middle of menu screen) - for me it works if I just click on the video, it goes back to normal size again. Does that work for you?

Don't be quick to assume this is an issue (it's not, cuz I am able to click on video to get it back to full size with a keyboard).

I understand your point about experiencing this situation with a remote control instead of a keyboard, but let me ask you:

How would you accidentally press "ESC" with a remote control?

[deanmv]

If you press Esc anytime then just hit tab on your keyboard and it will load make the window full screen again straight away. I am not using Confluence and this is working so should be ok for all of them.

With a remote you can "return" back out of the video and it will carry on running, which I assume is the same as pressing esc. Then you can map the "fullscreen" command to any other button which will basically ask as the tab key but on a remote.

[Jakobud]

Thanks, first time I'm actually seeing a hotkeys table. I tried to find some settings in XBMC for remapping hotkeys but no luck. Also, I figured ESC or Backspace would be mapped to a "back" button a remote. I'm just trying to figure out how to setup an HTPC that is user friendly for everyone in my family. The last thing I need is for someone to click the "Displays CPU usage & video diagnostic info" button and not figure out what is it, why it's there or how to turn it off...

Also, what is the difference between Backspace and Escape? How come Escape doesn't behave like Backspace? If I'm on a submenu and I want to go up to the previous menu, I would understand on a keyboard that you need to press Backspace. If I was using a typical Harmony Universal Remote, they all seem to have a Back button and an Exit button. I guess Back = Backspace and Exit = Escape?

Dont' get me wrong I'm not trying to complain, I'm just trying to understand how this would all work with a normal TV + Remote control setup that is 100% user friendly for non-tech geeks like me. Just looking at all the different keyboard mapping buttons it almost seems like XBMC is dependent on a keyboard...

[deanmv]

You are right about the backspace/escape thing but you can map any button to do anything you want with a remote on xbmc. The list is here: http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Keyboard.xml and if you look there is a "PreviousMenu" action and a "ParentDir" action. So the previous menu would act like esc and parent directory would act like backspace (I think).

So you could map these to which ever buttons you want and also you can take out some actions so that buttons do nothing like the diagnostic info one. So you can literally just map say, up, down, left, right, play, stop, fast forward and rewind.

Also you can map the same key to do different things depending where you are within xbmc, for example my "fast forward" button when I am in a menu goes all the way back to home, whereas when I am watching a video it obviously rewinds. Hope this helps.

Here is the mapping for the Harmony remote if that helps, might give you an idea of how it works: https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/blob/master...armony.xml